It's 80m away at this point, and you are travelling a the appropriate speed for the dual carriageway, not slowing before the off-slip so as to not invite a heavy (or indeed any vehicle) up your tail.The uncontrolled crossing has just come into sight: See it? Anyone crossing? You have less than three seconds to react (and if you try to stop you are likely to overshoot by a few metres!). The crossing BTW is designed as suitable for the visually impaired (should they wish to stroll along the shared path to the side of the dual carriageway), so you cannot simply rely on the judgement of those trying to use it to have estimated your speed and course.

The STW.com link is interesting - loads of complaints but no proposals. What do they actually want instead?

FWIW I've spent much of the last 6 years working to stop road workers crossing motorways (with incredible success, something like 3.6 million crossings p.a. eliminated - down to a residual small percentage) while installing and retrieving temporary traffic management. Their training is to allow 3s per lane.

This article which was linked to in the references of the blog post shows the typical mentality of people these days.

A dangerous slip road crossing?

Let us demand the speed limit is reduced, rather than redesigning the slip road crossing so that it is vastly safer, perhaps by either simply putting a zebra down and signs up to highlight the presence of the crossing, or changing the set up so that cyclists ride up the slip road, across the roundabout at the top of the slip road, and then cycle down the on slip to rejoin the main carriageway, entirely on the left, rather than the silly design they've implemented which seems to take the cyclist up to the roundabout, throws them into the traffic on the roundabout, then provides no provision for cycling back down on to the A38.

For these kind of scenarios, my standard move is to slow down to an indicated 60ish in lane 1 before I've reached the 100 yard sign before the exit begins. This means I'm travelling slightly slower, thus providing me with a bit more time to react to anything unseen on the slip road. The reason for slowing to an indicated 60 is because on my car, that's a GPS speed of 56ish meaning I'm not likely to end up with an angry lorry driver attempting to manoeuvre their lorry into my boot.

I shall have to admit, I've never actually considered the possibility of a pedestrian or cyclist actually attempting to cross the slip road as I'm exiting a dual carriageway, but that's born out of the fact I don't know anyone lunatic enough to even think about using a dual carriageway on a bike. But these people certainly exist. I shall be paying that possibility a bit more attention in the future.

In the same way that I think people in favour of "surface dressing" as a suitable alternative to resurfacing should be shot blasted by lorries driving along surface dressed roads at NSL speeds, maybe we should start requiring those implemented ludicrous cycle schemes to use them before signing off?

At the same time though - does a facility existing abrogate responsibility from a cyclist deciding that it's safe to use? It might be their right, but to exert that right in the face of ever falling driving standards, and where it's fairly obvious who's going to come off worse in an accident, what do they really hope to achieve by asserting their right to use such roads/facilities?

jont- wrote: implemented ludicrous cycle schemes to use them before signing off?

At the same time though - does a facility existing abrogate responsibility from a cyclist deciding that it's safe to use? It might be their right, but to exert that right in the face of ever falling driving standards, and where it's fairly obvious who's going to come off worse in an accident, what do they really hope to achieve by asserting their right to use such roads/facilities?

So, at that junction, what's the unludicrous, affordable, alternative?

jont- wrote: implemented ludicrous cycle schemes to use them before signing off?

At the same time though - does a facility existing abrogate responsibility from a cyclist deciding that it's safe to use? It might be their right, but to exert that right in the face of ever falling driving standards, and where it's fairly obvious who's going to come off worse in an accident, what do they really hope to achieve by asserting their right to use such roads/facilities?

So, at that junction, what's the unludicrous, affordable, alternative?